Beer is delicious. Multiple beers (and a couple glasses of wine) on a school night are less so. I was having an underproductive weekend to start with, as it seems all the recent activity is catching up with me (on Saturday I took two naps and was in bed by 10:30). I’m glad I went out with my classmates last night after a late afternoon party at TACT, Queens College’s partner in the MFA playwriting program, but I had hoped to start the week with a bang, waking up early and getting a bunch of work done before class. Instead I woke up late, and with a groan. What’s that quote about youth being wasted on the young? Now that I actually care about my classes I’m wishing for my youthful ability to feel perky after a late night out.
Plus, I attended the feminist politics conference at Columbia, which was great but overwhelming. It was a lot of information and a lot of academic conversation raising more questions than answers, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a lot to chew on.
Plus, my Henry James professor scolded us for producing work that isn’t up to grad school snuff.
Plus, did I mention I didn’t get enough done this weekend? And that today I have no energy but have poems to read and analyze, an essay response paper to write, and a short story to continue drafting? And though I can see how much I’m learning about the craft of writing, I’m questioning whether I have what it takes to make the leap from good to great writer? And that maybe I’m in over my head with all this academic stuff? And that the morning is almost gone and all I’ve managed to do is drink coffee and feel sorry for myself?
How do you deal with the no energy/low mood/lots o’ work combo?
P.S. Check out Gloria Jacobs, executive director of The Feminist Press, and Courtney Martin from feministing.com discussing the oxymoron “Palin Feminism.”
Monday, September 22, 2008
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2 comments:
I'm really jealous of the cool feminist stuff you have going on.
I'm right there with you on all the questions you pose in the last paragraph. Lately, in critiquing the stories I've read for workshop I've started to feel like I kind of get it. I'm understanding how to be a helpful reviewer. Of course I don't know if my classmates agree, but it is helping me feel productive. Yet, I don't know how to review my own work in that mindset and it is frustrating. I can see so much potential and comment to it on my peers' work, but am blind to it in my own. (Is it even there!?)
I am certain, without even reading your work, that there's plenty of potential in it. You're smart, engaged, and you care about improving the work, so I think we just have to have faith that through study and practice, that potential will come through.
My published writer friends say the self-editing skill comes with time. I'm with you - I'm terrible at it now - but I hope that in the regular critiquing of classmate's work (and close reading of published work, something I've never done before) all that practice will seep into our ability to look at our own work critically.
I hadn't really thought about how this focus on the work - mine and others' - would bring up all these existential questions about my value as a writer, my intelligence even. But I'm too busy to think about, so I'll have to have my little meltdown later (ha).
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